See, I guess I still don't see this as a huge
ideological battle of some kind.
We also don't really have another option without my DD needing to dump the honors/AP version of the course-- and it's a graduation requirement.
I
did do that last year with the absolute HARRIDAN of a biology teacher, and I absolutely do NOT regret that. I was also far from the only angry parent with that teacher. On the other hand, I know that I burned a lot of years of administrator capital with that move when I finally went nuclear over it (in December, after putting up with it for three months).
This teacher is someone who gets along well with some bright students, and isn't particularly difficult to work with in general. He has a reputation as a good teacher, in other words.
Thus far, my only evidence for unprofessional conduct is in some of his verbal statements to me (re: "work ethic" and "form over substance"), and in his behavior in showing my child's work to another of her current teachers without my (and her) express permission. His commentary being so contradictory is probably a bit of a grey area. All of those things
could (if only just) be communication problems or personality issues. He is a military, 'all-business' kind of guy (probably staunchly conservative, given some of his in-class asides), and my DD has the stereotypical PG kid's vision of the world as a theater of the absurd and she's both a socialist, a hard-core pacifist, and a Quaker by nature. Not a good combo, to the say the least. There
may be subtle ideological differences which are interfering, but as far as I can tell, he's been reasonably non-judgmental there.
I
do support his ideas of making sure that students are held to high standards, etc. I like him personally.
The problem is that his communication and teaching style is very very different from my DD's needs as a student, and it is borderline toxic in light of the current situation. He "wants to see how she thinks," but is at the same time telling her that she's WRONG to tell him what she actually thinks. She, being a 13yo, naturally has kind of melted under this onslaught and is now wrestling with the possibility that: a) her writing isn't "college-ready" (Baloney, by the way), and/or that b) the way she thinks is "wrong" and she needs to "fix" it.
I suspect, in fact, that
mostly this is a communication issue. It just doesn't feel as though he thinks it's his responsibility to DO anything about it.
The other thing that occurred to me this morning after his phone call to DD is that he is making some obvious mistakes on the GT front. He is making assumptions about what she is having difficulty with-- not FINDING OUT. All of my many years of teaching... did NOTHING to teach me to anticpate how a non-NT child/student will interact with curriculum or instructions.
I'm a good educator. I can anticipate problems for
most learners with curriculum in the sciences and mathematics. But not with non-NT students. Never, ever, EVER presume to know what the problem is. It's usually NOT what I would have predicted, sometimes astonishingly/laughingly so.
So the salient thing is that depending upon your "instincts" and "experience" to know where a student is having a problem... is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG when it comes to a non-NT student. This includes PG students, whose asynchrony makes them profoundly different from bright, NT students in terms of their interaction with curriculum. Active listening isn't a "choice" in those situations-- it's essential if you plan on being any kind of assistance to those students, and if you see that as an obligation as a teacher (most do), then you can't skip it because it isn't your 'style' to do it.
The other thing that I keep wondering about all of this is... if it were the OPPOSITE problem (that is, a student turned in written answers which WAY outstripped his/her other class work), the teacher would have called the student because of the red flags it would raise.
Kind of thinking that I have an obligation to pursue both of these aspects of this.
I somehow doubt that he's going to consider either thing much of an opportunity for professional development.
